Please join me and my co-host, Dawn Helmrich Neuburg, for Ep.11 of “Shining Light on Shadows: A Candid Conversation About Mental Health.” Our guest will be Samantha Collier, the founder and executive director of TeamTeal365. She is a long-time advocate for survivors of sexual abuse.
Samantha, Dawn and myself are all survivors of sexual abuse or rape. This episode will focus on how we’ve each used advocacy to not only survive the unthinkable, but to also thrive. Our mental health journeys are intimately connected to our status as thrivers.
We’ll be live Thursday, July 25 at 7pm ET / 6pm CT / 4pm PT. If you can’t watch the show live, you can watch the recording at your convenience on this website or the links below.
You can watch the recording here
or watch and comment on social media:
As Samantha wrote in her blog post, Thriving and Surviving by Soaring Beyond the Ashes, “I am a Thriver from both sexual and domestic abuse. My 5-year-old son “Afrika” is a light that will light this world on fire. Unlike me, he has been raised in Love, I had to learn love. Thankfully I was able to heal and now help others see themselves as worthy.” She closed by writing, “My biggest flex and healing skill has been to rise beyond the ashes and soar, while helping others.”
Dawn wrote about how advocacy work can be both “healing and rewarding” in her blog post, The Personal and Community Benefits of Advocacy Work. She added, “I knew that my voice could be a tool to make change in the systems that failed me. So that is what I did. I spoke up and I spoke out.”
I wrote about my own journey as an advocate, which started when I first met Dawn eight years ago. It took off when I participate on a panel organized by Samantha in 2022 and I really found my voice after co-hosting a show with Candace Sanchez (our guest on Episode 3) focusing on male survivors of sexual abuse. As I wrote in my blog post, Thriving as an Advocate With the Support of Other Survivors, “Survivors CAN be thrivers. It’s not always easy and it’s not always a straight line, but with the support of other survivors it gets easier every day.”
Dawn and I launched this twice a month show (the 2nd and 4th Thursdays of the month) in order to help reduce the stigma associated with mental health. In the coming weeks and months, we’ll be joined by friends and colleagues who are working through or have worked through their own challenges, practitioners who can speak to some of the issues faced by their clients and advocates who can talk about a range of different issues.
The show is produced by Digimentors on a pro bono basis.
Resources / Relevant Links
National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) Helpline
800-950-6264 Or text "HelpLine" to 6264; nami.org
Mental Health America Call or text 988 or chat 988lifeline.org; mhanational.org Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network (RAINN) National Sexual Assault Hotline 800-656-HOPE (4673); rainn.org
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